In her 2005 presidential address to the American Studies Association, Karen Halttunen delivered a speech that would be published in American Quarterly the following year, entitled “Groundwork: American Studies in Place.” She discussed the “disneyfication” of American place-making; the replacement of reality with an idealized vision that engenders racism and sexism. What occurs in disneyfication is the substitution of place with an idea – one that is idealized, homogenous, and limiting. Disneyfication is problematic in that it only presents a simplified version of reality. The name obviously comes from Disney, whose presentation of ideas to children has traditionally been an idealized, optimistic representation of the world that doesnt engage the realities of the world. This amounts to the filtration or censorship of ideas – ideas that fall outside a utopian vision of reality are eliminated.
I’ve been witnessing the disneyfication of historical roleplaying in Second Life. Since the closing of the first Wild West roleplaying sim, Sigil, a number of new RP sims have been created to take its place. It’s difficult to keep track of these sims – they briefly appear and then, just like Sigil, completely vanish. Their significance is not in the number of simulations that have followed, but the manner which they conduct business. Many of these new environments resemble historical amusement parks or shopping malls more than they do roleplaying environments. A good example of this is Sand Ranch, where the streets are lined with small shops selling “authentic” avatar clothing, as well as stylized clothing that can make you look like a Country singer. The historical accuracy of these environments isn’t necessarily intended nor desired – their goal is to create a profit.
My criticism of disneyfication directly relates to my studies of the Oregon Trail computer game, Second Life historical roleplaying, and the potential use of virtual worlds for educational purposes. I should clarify that not all roleplaying simulations have been simplified into historical amusement parks. What has occurred is a shift in ownership – several successful historical roleplaying sims persist with group ownership. New simulations take advantage of the popularity of these environments and market their products to that community of users. The disneyfication that occurs in these newer roleplaying sims is largely due to an imbalance of ownership. When one person, or only a select few control how ideas are represented within a sim, they are naturally limited.
One of the exciting things about Sigil and other historical roleplaying sims is how collaborate these environments become. For example, Sigil itself had virtual town hall meetings, where virtual citizens would gather together with the mayor to discuss pressing issues. There were a list of roles that citizens could take up, and each person collaborated to affect the sim’s narrative structure. How the West, and history itself was represented within the sim depended on these individual users. The disneyfication that occurs in many newer Wild West sims can be attributed to this lack of community and collaboration. Traditional computer simulations, the Oregon Trail included, were limited by the presentation of ideas. Since all actions are hardcoded into the software, only a few select “experts” could present the West’s narrative, while Second Life as a social space has no such limitations.
The power of Second Life and any type of new social media is that it allows user interaction and the creation of relationships between individuals and environments. When learning history, those elements are critical to the retention of knowledge. Must there be disneyfication of historical roleplaying in Second Life? I would argue no – not more than there is any other process of learning. There is abstraction to some extent – we can only learn so much and most of us will not become experts. But there is the potential for Second Life, as a collaborative and social learning environment, to allow students to reach beyond the limited knowledge presented by experts, and learn through their peers in ways that mean more to them individually – a process of internalization that is the intention of learning.
Is it necessarily so that community involvement leads to historical accuracy? It seems to me that in a lot of the roleplaying environments i’ve been in, people want to have a good time, and that doesn’t necessarily always mean having a historically accurate time. I might just want to pretend to be a cowboy, consarnit.
You’re right Thom – community involvement and collaboration does not necessarily lead to historical accuracy. Similarly, playing a historical simulation like the Oregon Trail computer game does not necessarily lead to the retention of historical knowledge either. Understanding the shifting of knowledge (manifested in software, from ‘experts’ controlling the historical narrative to amateurs) doesn’t necessarily alter the effectiveness of teaching history, however it mirrors shifts within the learning paradigm and the role of new media within classrooms of the future.
In my post I referred to the POTENTIAL for these environments to become places of learning and sharing, but their existence alone does not lead to accurate historical knowledge. Instead, these new technologies (the Oregon Trail, and historical roleplaying in virtual worlds) demand social pedagogies and critical media literacy skills. Augmentative instruction is necessary toward accurate retention of knowledge – be that through prefacing narration and repetition of a game, or lectures within the classroom. I am currently studying roleplaying simulations in Second Life to understand potential collaborative opportunities, not in an effort to replicate their historical inaccuracies and shortcomings.
You’re right, Dave — the newer sims are very different from ol’ Sigil, even though some of them use some of the same buildings. I’m renting a house in the Broken Rose sim that’s identical to my old Doctor’s office in Sigil!
Yes, there is a stronger emphasis on selling stuff. But keep in mind, these sims aren’t cheap. They cost a $1000 to $2000 to buy — that’s real U.S. Dollars, not that Linden stuff — and over $300 a month to maintain. Someone has to foot that bill, and in Sigil there was a recurring threat that the sim would end because the owner wasn’t willing to pony up the money anymore. So now the new sims are more commercial.
I don’t mind that so much — heck, I have stores in both Tombstones, and a couple of other Old West themed sims like Sand Ranch, which isn’t really meant to be a roloeplay sim — but what’s bothering me in the RP sims is what seems like a complete abandonment of any attempt at recreating the Old West. Parties and events have DJs, play modern music — sometimes Country but not always — and feature such Wild West staples as disco balls, line dancing and teleport stations. I know there is some actual roleplaying that goes on there, but when I’m there nothing story-wise seems to be going on, and none of the special scheduled events going on there have anything to do with roleplay.
But then, I’m not really helping much either. After getting burned in Sigil, I’ve been reluctant to get involved in RP sims much, keeping a distance and waiting for the conditions to be right before jumping into the deep end again. I’m still waiting.